“Hold on, Martinette!” called out the planter, “what’s all this pantomime business? Speak out, little one.”
“My popa don’t want any picture took,” she offered, a little timorously. On her way to the door she had looked back to say this. In that fleeting glance she detected a smile of intelligence pass from one to the other of the group. She turned quickly, facing them all, and spoke out, excitement making her voice bold and shrill: “My popa ent one low-down ‘Cajun. He ent goin’ to stan’ to have that kine o’ writin’ put down un’neath his picture!”
She almost ran from the room, half blinded by the emotion that had helped her to make so daring a speech.
Descending the gallery steps she ran full against her father who was ascending, bearing in his arms the little boy, Archie Sublet. The child was most grotesquely attired in garments far too large for his diminutive person – the rough jeans clothing of some negro boy. Evariste himself had evidently been taking a bath without the preliminary ceremony of removing his clothes, that were now half dried upon his person by the wind and sun.
“Yere you’ li’le boy,” he announced, stumbling into the room. “You ought not lef dat li’le chile go by hisse’f comme ça in de pirogue.” Mr. Sublet darted from his chair; the others following suit almost as hastily. In an instant, quivering with apprehension, he had his little son in his arms. The child was quite unharmed, only somewhat pale and nervous, as the consequence of a recent very serious ducking.
Evariste related in his uncertain, broken English how he had been fishing for an hour or more in Carancro lake, when he noticed the boy paddling over the deep, black water in a shell-like pirogue. Nearing a clump of cypress-trees that rose from the lake, the pirogue became entangled in the heavy moss that hung from the tree limbs and trailed upon the water. The next thing he knew, the boat had overturned, he heard the child scream, and saw him disappear beneath the still, black surface of the lake.
“W’en I done swim to de sho’ wid ‘im,” continued Evariste, “I hurry yonda to Jake Baptiste’s cabin, an’ we rub ‘im an’ warm ‘im up, an’ dress ‘im up dry like you see. He all right now, M’sieur; but you musn’ lef ‘im go no mo’ by hisse’f in one pirogue.”
